Issuu

June 2020

AW AMONG WORLDS

JOURNEYS From Here to There and Back Again

AMONG WORLDS

JUNE 2020 • VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 3

ARTICLES

14 30

8 4 16 Journey in Artwork

Malik Dieleman

Immigration Sahil Babar

The Taste of Blackberries

Shangri-La (or Not)

Christine Kindberg

Tim Hoiland

32 22 Spotlight

Mimi Khalvati

The Exile Speaks of Mountains

From Here to There and Now Where?

Rachel Hicks

34 26

John & Lynne Evans

Cover Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

So You Want to Go Back Home? Marilyn R. Gardner

Journey in Photography

Stephanie Tea

42 Full Circle

Naomi Hattaway

Choosing Home

46 40

Rebecca Hopkins

TCK Definition

An individual who, having spent a significant part of the developmental years in a culture other than the parents’ cultures, does not have full ownership of any. Elements from each culture are incorporated into the life Addressing Home experience, but the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar experience.

Journey in Poetry Kerith Thomas

Hadassah Winters Lampron

50 Resilience

~David C. Pollock

From the Director Keeping Your Feet Michael V. Pollock

Tim Sanford

Editor: Rachel Hicks Copy Editor: Riah Solomon Graphic Designer: Laurel Fleming Digital Publishing: Bret Taylor

The mission of Among Worlds is to encourage adult TCKs and other global nomads by addressing real needs through relevant issues, topics, and resources.

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Editor’s Letter

Journeys How ironic is this issue’s theme? Journeys—at an unbelievable moment in our collective memory in which hardly anyone in the whole world is able to “journey” anywhere! As I write this, my parents (whom you will meet in this issue) are “stuck” in Prague, my brother and his family are “stuck” in Hong Kong, and I am “stuck” in Baltimore, Maryland. But maybe we’re not “stuck” at all. Maybe we’re right where we’re supposed to be on our respective journeys. As TCKs, don’t we often make these kinds of shifts in perspective quite fluidly? We’ve probably learned a thing or two about taking life interruptions in stride. Wherever you find yourself right now—at this exact, strange moment in modern history—try to embrace the idea that you may be where you should be. It may be a world away from those you love most. You may not have been able to board that last flight out before the borders closed. Your loved ones may be stuck somewhere that doesn’t count as “home.” Perhaps you were planning a new journey, or a return journey, and it had to be cancelled. Some of you got “stuck” in limbo, unable to return home when this crisis hit. You feel like you haven’t stopped journeying, and all you want is to curl up in your own bed again. That’s hard—it just is. Now is when your TCK skills of adaptability and

e We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started…and know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot

creating your own comforts of home on the road will come into play. This long pause in your journey will eventually end. Sometime soon—we hope— we’ll all be actively “journeying” again. Won’t the airports and train stations feel deliciously welcoming and familiar? I don’t think, though, that we’ll ever forget this season in which the world stood still. Let’s learn what we can in it and from it. Let’s let others more practiced in standing still teach us contentment in this interrupted time. We’re so good at journeying. But maybe some of us need to learn how to just be. I’m thrilled to introduce you in this issue to poet Mimi Khalvati, who is featured in our Spotlight interview. Iranian-born but raised on the Isle of Wight, Mimi speaks about how she plays with Persian poetic forms in English lyric poetry, and how she has made discoveries about herself and her identity through her writing. Other contributors in this edition help us to see old places with new eyes, to grow in resilience, and to deal with the complicated feelings that arise when we visit places we used to call home. And though it may seem far off for some of us, we’ll look at how adult third culture kids approach retirement when there is nowhere to call home. May each of you be blessed and find solace and joy in these strange times.

Love,

Rachel Rachel Hicks EDITOR

JUNE 2020

Shangri-La (or Not):

Seeing with New Eyes By Tim Hoiland

s a missionary kid starved for For some families, furlough means American culture, to me there returning to some familiar place and were few words more enchant- staying put for a while. For our family of ing, more promising than five, it meant loading up a car and making “furlough.” a big squiggly loop around the United In Guatemala, where my parents States. My mom and dad grew up in were doing linguistic work in a remote the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific indigenous area, Northwest, respecwe didn’t own a tively, but they met TV. Nor did we in Dallas, Texas. have access to the So, when people Of course, internet. Most of would ask, we never what I knew about knew where to American culture say we were from. the town hadn’t changed. had come from Which meant that during all-too-infrequent I had. furlough, we’d furloughs. The always cover a rest would come lot of ground. from classmates Visits to far-flung who would return to the international school in Guate- family and friends would take us from mala City after their own summers up the Santa Monica Pier all the way north. From them, I’d pick up on the to the Jersey Shore—sometimes in a latest in American fashion, sports, and single summer. By my teenage years, I’d already set foot in some thirty-five states. pop culture. 4

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Usually we flew to Dallas, where we’d buy a used station wagon or minivan. But in the summer of 1995, when I was twelve, my parents decided we’d drive up through Mexico. Our Toyota Hilux had served us well on Guatemala’s mountain roads with those endless switchbacks and occasional mudslides. (There’s a reason the Hilux is the pickup of choice for missionaries and terrorists alike.) But for a summer-long road trip with my brother, sister, and me crammed in the back, there were some serious drawbacks. Like navyblue vinyl seats that our legs would stick to. Oh yeah, and no air conditioning. Our journey through Mexico took a few days. But the unrelenting heat—and the stomach bug I picked up from a questionable club sandwich—made it feel a lot longer than that. By the time we crossed into McAllen, Texas, I was starting to feel better—in more ways than one. The first thing I noticed that evening was the freeway. It was so wide and smooth and well-lit! We stopped at a supermarket, where I marveled at all the options—an entire aisle for cereal! Fifty brands of toilet paper! Then we made our way to a motel with a swimming pool, air-conditioning, and, wonder of wonders, ESPN. To me, this was Shangri-La. When I turned on the TV, I navigated to the sports channel I’d heard so much about. I’ll never forget what I first saw: Ken Griffey, Jr.—a superstar I knew only from baseball cards—crashing repeatedly into the outfield wall. In replay after replay, the Mariners centerfielder fell to the ground in pain, but somehow held onto the baseball. I would have been content to stay at the motel forever. But furlough might as JUNE 2020

well be a verb, because the next morning we were back on the road. That summer, the O.J. Simpson trial was underway. And the country was reeling from the Oklahoma City bombing, carried out by someone who shared my name. I was vaguely aware of both events. But for me, the people and places we were encountering took center stage. On Memorial Day, we went swimming in a lake in the Texas hill country. At Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, we learned the difference between stalagmites and stalactites. We stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and passed through the vast Mojave Desert. In Southern California, my parents spoke at the church where I’d been baptized. A month in, we pulled into my grandparents’ house in Snoqualmie, Washington, east of Seattle. Here we’d have a chance to relax for a few weeks. There was a family reunion. We played ping pong and picked blackberries. On an island in the Puget Sound we collected sand dollars. Grandpa taught me (in vain, I’m afraid) to play chess. And each evening, I’d watch the Mariners game on TV with Grandma. I loved these daily rhythms. But before we could say Snoqualmie, the time had come to get back on the road. Winding our way first east, then south, we explored lakes and waterfalls,

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saw mountains and meadows. We drove through a herd of buffalo at Yellowstone, experienced snow flurries at Beartooth Pass, ate donuts at the summit of Pikes Peak. Finally, sometime in August, we closed the loop. We were back in McAllen. It was the same border town, the same motel, the same grocery store. But I couldn’t believe my eyes. The water in the motel pool was scuzzy. The oncegleaming supermarket seemed cramped and dingy. And the town as a whole? Nothing to write home about. What had happened to this place? Of course, the town hadn’t changed. I had. In Marcel Proust’s words, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” At the start of the summer, McAllen had been the first stop in a dream world, a land of endless possibilities. It was the gateway to a big country I sort of belonged to but didn’t truly know. But after a full, whirlwind summer of open roads, national parks, baseball games, and family reunions, I was seeing McAllen with new eyes. This border town had become the gateway to somewhere else. It symbolized a return to life as usual. And I wasn’t quite ready for that.

I never begrudged my parents for our And then there’s the enduring gift life. I saw their calling as a noble, worth- of friendship. In recent years, my wife while one. I still do. But I was acutely and I have returned to Guatemala to aware of Guatemala’s support community nuisances and depridevelopment work vations. It would be there. During those It’s good to belong to several years before visits, we have stayed a community of people whose I’d come to see my with old family friends childhood with grathearts and minds will always be in the western highitude and wonder, lands where I once mixed with hearthyphenated—between cultures, lived. And back in the break for Guatemacapital, we share meals between places, la’s wounds—and with some childhood the ability to name friends from the interbetween worlds. my own. national school. Most That furlough in of my classmates left the summer of 1995 was a gift. But as I Guatemala after graduating, but many would later come to see, so was our life in have now moved back, choosing to raise the Land of Eternal Spring (as Guatemala their own families there. is called). Turns out, America doesn’t As different as our lives may seem, have a monopoly on natural and cultural the bonds between third culture kids are treasures. real. It’s good to belong to a community I would always be able to say I had of people whose hearts and minds will lived in an adobe house on a mountain always be hyphenated—between cultures, ridge at 9,000 feet. Or that I’d climbed an between places, between worlds. Because active volcano, explored ancient Mayan if we’re honest, we wouldn’t have it any ruins, and vacationed at a lake so beauother way. tiful Aldous Huxley considered it “too Tim Hoiland is communications director much of a good thing.” Or that living among subsistence farmers had taught me at 1MISSION, a community development organization working in Mexico and Central more about tenacity, resilience, and hope America. He grew up in Guatemala and now than one could ever learn in a book. lives in Tempe, Arizona.

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he day I went back to Metrenco, Chile, it was sunny—bright enough to need sunglasses, warm enough to tie my jacket around my waist. When my flight left Chicago, it was the tail end of a winter that got so cold it was possible to get frostbite within five minutes of going outside. As the plane wing pointed out the first rays of morning emerging behind the Andes, I was arriving in summer. It was my first time back to Chile in over twenty years. People had warned me that returning to my childhood home might be a disappointment. Places change, they said. Buildings get torn down; fields get paved and become parking lots. The people you cared about move away. It will never be the same as you remembered. But even if nothing was left, I wanted to stand in the place that had shaped my

childhood. I wanted to be there again, in Metrenco, to see what had become of that house and the trees and the fields I left when I was nine. We moved eleven times in four countries before I turned eighteen. This house in Chile was the place I’d lived longest, the first place I remembered, before I realized I could never fully belong anywhere. It was the last place we’d lived where I didn’t think about how we would eventually have to leave. This was where I learned to ride a bike on gravel roads, where I spent hours climbing trees and playing Barbies, reading in a hammock, and playing pretend with my brother and our neighbors and my dog. This was the home I revisited when asleep. The little wooden house surrounded by pine trees and bamboo thickets, hemmed in by barbed wire fences woven with blackberry brambles.

The

Taste of

Blackberries By Christine Kindberg

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In my dreams I could still run through the orchard, past the guest house, down the field toward the tall, conical tree we called the Rocketship Tree. Sometimes I climbed the tree again. Sometimes I found myself unable to move, just standing there, staring at it. I convinced my brother to go with me. My brother, an Anglican priest and church leader, had a conference in Santiago at the beginning of April, so I talked him into flying down a few days early to visit our childhood home with me. I arrived in Chile a week before he did. Through Facebook, I’d gotten in touch with one of my closest friends from elementary school, who was now living in the capital city with her husband. The plan was that Carla and I would meet in a metro station and go get coffee. As I arrived in the station, I realized my phone didn’t work underground, and I panicked—at which exit would she be waiting? How would I recognize her? Would she recognize me? But then there she was: she couldn’t be anyone else but the adult version of the nine-year-old who had been my friend. Carla and I talked for hours, laughing and serious by turns, remembering stories from when we were kids. How we’d dressed in matching homemade costumes for a school performance. The games we’d played at my birthday parties. How her younger sisters would follow us everywhere when I went to her house to play. The friends we played with in Sunday School. The adventures we had when I joined her family for vacation. She told me about how she was left out of our former friend group after I moved,

and how she eventually switched schools because of it. I told her how hard it was to adjust to life in the US, and how hard it was to move to Panama two years later. She told me about studying law and what it was like to be a public defender in Chile. I told her about studying English and writing and what it’s like to work as an editor. She’d taken the afternoon off from work to meet me, and she made us dinner as we talked into the evening. Despite my initial worries about what it would be like to see her again, I was glad to find she was someone I would have wanted to be friends with if we met today.

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Then I flew to Temuco, in south-central Chile. Through the plane windows, the trees and fields became more and more familiar. I spent the night with family friends, retelling more memories, amazed at how much they remembered from my childhood. Then I picked up my brother from his flight, and we drove twenty minutes to Metrenco. The highway had been redone— it was more streamlined and smooth—and the exit was at a different place than it had been. Still, once we got off the highway, we knew where we were. We traced remembered landmarks until we found the old road we used to take every day to and from our school in the city. Yes, there was the railroad crossing where my mom’s Jeep was hit by a train because there was no stop guard and she couldn’t see around the bushes. There was the convenience store we sometimes walked to, next to the house that had a dog that bit someone—was it me? Was it my brother? There was the school with the basketball court out front where we sometimes came to play. The basketball court hadn’t changed a bit. The gravel road was the same too— nicer gravel, maybe—in the section where new neighborhoods had been built on either side of the road. I didn’t remember it being as far of a drive down that road. But surely that was the dairy farm that was next door to us, with the neighbor who brought us bottles of milk fresh from his cows, milk neither my brother nor I had wanted to drink. And there was our gate. It now had a sign saying Koyamentu, announcing what was now a church retreat center. 10

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This was the home I revisited when asleep.

Gone was the gatehouse where the groundskeeper used to live, but the drive was still lined with eucalyptus trees. I turned into the two-track road, feeling like I was driving into a memory. I drove slowly, shaking, tears just behind my eyelids, wide-eyed as I tried to take it all in. How could it be that I was there? How could it be real? Was I sure that this time I wasn’t dreaming? I remembered this bend, where the eucalyptus ceded to bamboo thickets where we’d built forts and mapped out passageways. I remembered this other bend, approaching the beet field. This was the stretch of road where our dad used to let us sit on his lap and steer the car. There was the cow pasture we would walk across to visit our neighbors. There were the blackberry brambles, still clinging to the barbed wire fence. We parked and walked to the wooden house that had been ours. A man came out to meet us, the caretaker who lived there now. He told us we could walk around all we wanted, but he didn’t invite us in. I told myself that was okay; it was mostly the outside I remembered, anyway. I didn’t ask if there was still brown shag

carpet and if the room on the back left still had soft pink walls. I’m sure it didn’t. As we walked around, my brother and I kept pointing and remembering. There was the thicket where we once found the stone carving our dad destroyed because he thought it was an idol. There was the ledge where we would hop onto the stilts our dad made for us. There was the tree where we had a tire swing. There was the field where we set up goal posts to play soccer. We walked past the guest house, through the orchard, down the field toward where the Rocketship Tree had stood. The tree wasn’t there anymore. We couldn’t agree on where, exactly, it had been; there weren’t any indications left. Do you remember—we asked—how high we’d climb? How the bottom branches were like a spiral staircase? How there was a certain branch we pretended was a motorcycle? Another branch we challenged each other to jump from? My brother told me he used to dream of Chile, too.

We kept walking until we reached the woods. We explored again the thicket where we’d had trails and hideaways. The sunlight filtered through the bamboo shoots, casting long, thin shadows that crisscrossed our faces. It was past season for copihues, but there: high above us, on that vine clinging to the trunk of an old tree—a splash of cardinal red in a trumpet shape. The Chilean national flower—so rare it doesn’t grow anywhere else on earth. And there, in the shadows of the woods, was a blackberry bramble that still had berries, as if they’d been waiting for us. I had no basket—I wasn’t collecting them for any pies my mother had in mind—and so I ate as many as I could find. They stained my fingers purple, and they tasted just the way I remembered, as sweet as familiar laughter. The memory box that hangs on my wall in the Chicago suburbs now holds a black rock I picked up from the gravel in Metrenco, and I keep up with Carla on Instagram.

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I haven’t dreamed about Chile since I visited. Now, when I think about the place, the new memories I have of going back are stronger than my memories of the loss I felt when leaving. Now, I remember how my brother and I roamed the woods where we’d grown up, and how we sat and talked about our childhood, about the things we’d lost when we’d left, about how our family is and who we are because of it, how grateful we are to have grown up surrounded by woods and fields. Now, I take comfort from the fact that I know there are still copihues growing high up in the trees, where they always did. And I’m glad there are still blackberries growing along the barbed wire fence and in the woods, where they still taste sweeter than a dream, better than blackberries from anywhere else in the world. Christine Kindberg grew up in Peru, Chile, Panama, Kentucky, and North Carolina. She works as a Spanish-language editor at Tyndale House Publishers and is the author of the novel The Means That Make Us Strangers. https://ChristineKindberg.com https://www.amazon.com/Means-That-Make-Us-Strangers/dp/1797761358 https://instagram.com/christine.kindberg

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SPOTLIGHT Poet Mimi Khalvati

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elcome to Spotlight, a regular feature of Among Worlds. Our goal in the Spotlight column is to highlight third culture kids in all ages and stages of life who are making a difference in the world. In this issue, we are honored to be able to introduce you to poet Mimi Khalvati. Born in Tehran and raised on the Isle of Wight, Mimi explores in her writing many themes that will be familiar to TCKs: identity, loss,

displacement, shallow roots, the power of names, and the limitations and glories of various languages. Her work has been translated into nine languages, and she is an award-winning poet with numerous publications and honors. In our correspondence, Mimi said that reading Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds (Pollock, Van Reken) was “seminal” for her in helping her to better understand her life and her work. (All poems mentioned in the interview are available to read from her website.)

AW: I’ve noticed that you use quite a few images of growing things in your poetry: vines, leaves, bulbs, roots. Why do you think that is? Do you feel that you have “roots” and are able to grow and flourish in spite of or because of your mixed make-up of cultures? Mimi: Although I’ve lived my life mostly in cities, I grew up on the Isle of Wight, which is a very small, rural, and pretty island off the southern coast of England. My childhood is the source of much of my poetry, so I often draw images out of JUNE 2020

the natural world and am particularly drawn to small wayside things a child might stoop to, such as wild flowers and even weeds. Perhaps I feel I too have shallow roots but am also happy to take root anywhere, whatever the soil or site. I’m aware at the same time of the uprootedness of my background, having left my home country so young, and of the tenaciousness of my roots once I do settle down. AW: In your poem “Nostalgia”, the speaker mentions being alone in a “dream of a dark planet.” This brought to my mind the common TCK sense of rootlessness, of never fully feeling at “home” in a particular place on this planet. Is this a concept you explore further in other poems? Have you found a sense of belonging in a particular culture or place? Mimi: Many of my poems revolve around the idea of home and belonging, both as a poet and as a woman and mother. Since I can’t read or write Farsi, my mother tongue, I only write in English and very much within the English lyrical tradition. But my subject matter is often Iranian, drawing on memories of my few years there as a young adult, writing about my family whom I have always felt close to, even though they were so distant. So the duality is always there. Culturally, linguistically, and in my writing, I feel very much at home here in London, but in my body, my sensibilities, and physical being, I am more Iranian. I don’t feel this as a mind/body split though; it’s more like two colours merging to make a new colour. 18

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AW: Your poem “Ghazal: It’s Heartache” is a thoughtful read for global nomads. Does khalvati really mean “a quiet retreat,” or did I misread that reference? Can you talk a little bit about your name and what it means to you? Mimi: Yes, you’re quite right. Khalvati literally does mean “a quiet retreat.” The adjective khalvat means quiet, secluded, but the noun khalvati also means a Sufi or spiritual retreat. I learned this quite late in my life, at the time that I was writing this poem, and was very excited at the discovery as it rescued me from the embarrassment of the ghazal’s “signature couplet,” in which the author has to mention her/himself by name or pseudonym. I’d never previously had any real emotional connection to my patronymic but have subsequently felt a much stronger sense of ownership. And it’s a good name for a poet! AW: Is there a particular reason why you have written several ghazals? Does your attraction to that form have any relation to your cross-cultural life and identity? Mimi: Yes, my attraction to the ghazal is definitely due to my (lost) Persian heritage, as it is an old Persian form of love song with a monorhyme and refrain, still popular both as song and as poem across Eastern languages and cultures. Many American and British poets have taken to it too and are finding ways of writing ghazals in an Anglophone idiom. Poetry is so dear to the hearts of Iranians, many of whom can recite reams by heart, and I have always wondered how medieval

Click here to purchase Mimi’s book, Afterwardness.

poetry is kept so fresh and alive and still relevant to their daily lives. Exploring the form of the ghazal was in part my way of asking that question, as well as my wanting to bring over into English poetry some of the rhapsodic and musical expressions the ghazal offers.

etc. I have little sense of my own life story and sometimes rely on friends to remember my life for me! But we live in an age of mass migration and displacement, at a time when telling one’s own story, creating a platform for it and being heard, is so personally and politically urgent. In lyric poetry, however, I have found a place, or a home, which legitimises and allows for lack of memory, story, or narrative. The lyric void a poem occupies mirrors the void at the centre of my life, in which float all the key words you have mentioned: home, belonging, roots, culture, identity. Through poetry, I have been better able to accept their ambiguity and to value my life for the richness of its texture, its cross-fertilisations and connections. I feel a strong connection with the many people—TCKs, immigrants, exiles — whose experience in some ways might mirror mine. AW: Is there a poem of yours that you’d like to share with us that speaks specifically to TCKs in some way?

Mimi: My most recent collection, Afterwardness, explores the long-term effects of early displacement and loss and takes many of its themes from the TCK bible, Third Culture Kids, and I am hugely grateful to the editors. Unresolved AW: What kinds of discoveries have you griefs, passivity, disassociation, emotional made about yourself and your place in this flattening, chameleon-like adaptability, world through your writing? hidden diversity—many of my sonnets touch on these aspects and, although Mimi: I have always felt ashamed at my they are largely autobiographical, I hope appallingly bad memory, particularly others will recognise and relate to them. biographical memory, and my inability to The title poem looks through the eyes of retain facts, dates, historical narratives, a young boy from Aleppo onto a symbolic JUNE 2020

garden of paradise, a lost paradise, where language itself is lost, and all the early memories encoded within it. AW: Describe what “home” means for you: is it a place—if so, where? What qualities does your “home” have that make it home for you? Mimi: “Home” is in the heart of my family: my two children, grandchildren, living separately in our own homes, but bound together by love, shared histories, a common idiom, our sense of humour, range of references, and intimate knowledge of each other. “Home” is in the English language, in a community of poets, locally in London but also crossing international borders. “Home” is in my own flat, where I have lived nearly 30 years, and whose furnishings reflect my

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different senses of home—with many books, photographs, textiles, gifts given to me over the years, my mother’s paintings and tapestries, memorabilia, my archive of work. At the same time, “home” is always elsewhere, beyond the horizon, behind the sky, somewhere I dream of going to, but don’t know where. AW: Given this issue’s theme of journeys, is there something you’d like to share about what journey or journeying means to you in your life? Mimi: The word journey immediately summons up for me an image of airports. I love airports (despite all the hassle of security) for their anonymity, passivity, the sense of being in a liminal space, in between time zones, neither here nor there. I love being freed of any sense of

obligation or expectation of individuality and definition. Afterwardness begins and ends with air travel: the first poem set on my first flight to England at the age of six, and the last, more than sixty years later, in the here and now, looking up at vapour trails.

Vapour Trails Staring up at pure blue from down on earth, we see them shining in the firmament, the jets, the contrails, gliding back and forth like deep sea fish, soundless and innocent. Their exhaust particles and frozen vapours show us, graphically, cause and effect: in the silver bullet-nosed jets, the cause; in trails like spinal x-rays, the effect. It only takes a trigger, a single flight in childhood, for example, early trauma, to stretch the bare bones of the aftermath into a lyric void beyond the finite and knowable, a via negativa cruising at altitude on plumes of breathâ€Ś Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd, Manchester. To purchase Mimi Khalvatiâ€™s most recent collection, Afterwardness, please visit https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784107994. Learn more about Mimi and read some of her poetry at http:// www.mimikhalvati.co.uk/index.htm. JUNE 2020

From Here to There and No

o, after a lifetime of moving around internationally for work, where do you go when employed life is ending and “retired” life is about to begin? When being an expat is your identity, do you find a way to stay home (internationally) or to go home (to your passport country)? How do you decide? What priorities should guide your decisions? This is where we find ourselves in the spring of 2020, with many questions and few clear answers.

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A little context may be important. We both were born and grew up outside the United States (our passport country), came back for college, then left as soon as we could to begin our careers as international school teachers in northern India where I (John) grew up and felt was “home.” Our two children were born there in the foothills of the Himalayas. In the years that followed we worked in nine more international schools in eight different countries, with occasional

stints in the United States, the longest being seven years at a prep school in central Ohio. Now, after six years in the Czech Republic, we are retiring and are facing the question: “Where do we go from here?” Third culture kids around the world have responded to this kind of situation in various ways. For some, being a perpetual foreigner is preferable to settling down in one’s passport country. Others are fine with living as “hidden immigrants,” willing to sumerge the parts of their intercultural identity that set them apart. Among the many factors that can go into a

John and Lynne Evans with children Rachel and Jeremy.

ow Where? By John and Lynne Evans

TCK’s retirement decisions, here are some that currently influence our thinking. Relatives are an important consideration. Time has a way of diminishing the number of one’s relatives (through the passage of grandparents, parents, uncles, and aunts) and of redistributing one’s priorities among those who are still with us. Years ago, we spent our summer vacations in Pennsylvania with our parents, getting together with relatives, attending weddings and family reunions, JUNE 2020

Choosing Home by Rebecca Hopkins

Rebeccaâ€™s daughter, Renea, hangs from the jungle gym in their yard in Indonesia.

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he strangest part of our move back to America was the fact that we got to—and, I suppose, had to— choose our own house. At this point in my life, the military no longer chooses it. And the nonprofit organization with which we served for fourteen years in Indonesia wasn’t choosing it. It was up to us to choose. Ready or not. I’ve enjoyed the many perks of not having to choose my many addresses. As an Army kid, I could leave my entire world as a child and move to another Army-assigned house in yet another state. All that was left for me to do was make friends with the kids, also just arrived from far-flung places, on the other side of the duplex. Then, as an adult married to a jungle pilot, I could show up in a foreign country with only a handful of Rosetta-Stonetaught words. And someone would hand us the key to a house another expat had recently vacated—with a note on the kitchen counter that had directions to the nearest doctor. Then it was up to me to make do with the proximity to the late-night karaoke club. This time, though, we are leaving the big mission, the community that is like family, and all the choices they made for our family.

Sometimes this change feels like entering into a world of freedoms, possibilities, new breath. Sometimes, though, it feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, gasping for air. As we house-hunted in Colorado Springs, everyone in our family had their wishes. Our nine-year-old daughter asked for stairs. They’re rare and never carpeted in Indonesia—think stilted homes and planked steps. She learned to slide and bump down them at homes of family and friends on visits to the States, her laughter and curls bouncing behind her. Our oldest son just wanted to be able to do sleepovers with his new friend. My youngest son told me he’s been building rainbows over his imaginary house in the video game, Happy Craft. Rainbows. Got it. Let’s tell the realtor. My husband wanted affordability and something that wouldn’t fall apart on me when he’s gone on flights. I’m still amazed that clean drinking water right out of the faucet isn’t listed on Zillow. Do Americans realize how nice that is? But I did mention—again and again to my husband—that I wanted to live right next door to my sister. For fourteen years, I’ve lived on the other side of the world from her. I missed her happiest moments, like her JUNE 2020

Going back was like losing it all over again.

Addressing Home By Hadassah Winters Lampron

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lease list all addresses where you’ve resided for at least eight weeks. I groaned. Immigrating to Canada via spousal sponsorship was mostly a long process of filling out tedious forms like this one. When I saw it only required a record of residences after my eighteenth birthday, I sighed in relief. At age twenty-one, I was looking at a threeyear period. I listed eight addresses. None of them felt like home. My passport is American, but I grew up in Senegal and called it home for sixteen years. Even after we left Dakar, Senegal’s capital, in 2014, it remained the place I most strongly identified with the word “home.” When I received a scholarship to study in Dakar for a semester in 2018, I felt a sense of comfort. I thought going back would feel like going home. It only took a few days in Dakar to realize that while it was familiar, it wasn’t home. I was there temporarily as a student. There was no sense of permanence. My international friends were no longer there. Some of my Senegalese friends had moved to other cities. New highways, new buildings, new businesses that bought out the old…the city had grown without me, and I had grown without it. Like two friends who drifted apart, crossing paths again but with only enough time for small talk. A grocery store run-in where you exchange a quick “Hey, how’s it going? It’s been so long,” and an empty “We should get together again soon,” knowing you won’t. I didn’t want a “ships passing in the night” situation. I wanted hours of earnest conversation over endless cups of tea. I wanted to memorize the labyrinths of alleys, to know the bus routes by heart.

I wanted to learn the city’s gratitudes and grievances, what had changed, what was better, what was worse, and why. I wanted to perfect my Saturday market bargaining, to routinely soak up sunsets from the top of the lighthouse, to leave long trails of fading footprints on the coastline. I longed to say to this city once more, “I know you, and you know me, and I belong here.” But four months is hardly long enough for that. Going back was like losing it all over again. I lost the physical place when I left in 2014, but now I was losing the feelings I had attached to it for so long. It was hard to accept I had associated home with memories, with times—not place. You can only go back to places. Why is finding “home” such a constant struggle? Why is it so important? It’s wrapped up with our sense of security, belonging, cultural identity—tied to our very sense of self. We don’t know who we are without it. After moving to the United States, my sense of home became more strongly tied to my family. I journaled in 2015 that home was “when my family is laughing around the dinner table and our plates are clear, and our bellies are full.” Home was “the game of cards in the living room, trying to figure out why my little sister always wins.” When I moved onto my university campus in 2016, I lost those aspects of home as well. Then my family moved to a different state, and when I visited them on school breaks, I stayed in a new bedroom in a new town where I didn’t know anyone. I felt maybe nowhere was home anymore, and maybe I should just accept that. As the school year continued, I developed deeper friendships JUNE 2020

and over the summer found myself missing my college friends and professors. University is meant to be impermanent, not designed for putting down roots, and yet it became home. I then decided home is wherever people know you and love you, wherever you are welcomed in and made to feel you belong. For a while, this was enough for me. In 2018 I spent my spring semester interning in Cameroon, summer semester studying in Florida, and fall semester in Senegal. When I stayed with friends back at my university the week before my December graduation, I was with people who knew me and loved me and welcomed me. But it wasn’t home anymore. I realized there were still people who knew me and loved me in Senegal. I was still known and loved in Washington State where we moved in 2014, in South Carolina where my parents now live, in Cameroon where I spent five months during my internship, and there at my

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university in North Carolina. I knew and loved people in each of these places, too. And yet, in December 2018, caught between all these worlds that used to be mine, I knew I no longer belonged to any of them. I decided home is wherever I am, something I carry with me. But this interpretation fell short as well. Last year was full of transience, especially with my immigration process. Five weeks in South Carolina, separated from my husband. Three weeks in Quebec. A week on the road. If I was truly carrying “home” with me, it didn’t feel that way. Now, in 2020, I live in Alberta with my Canadian husband (that’s another whole story). We haven’t been here long. I’m far from my parents and siblings, far from our loud dinners and living-room card games. Since COVID-19 hit the province relatively soon after we arrived, we haven’t gotten out to meet many people yet. It’s too soon to have a large community here where I am known and loved.

But strangely, within just a few weeks of our arrival, Alberta became home. Not because I adapted quickly (can anyone truly adapt to temperatures of -40?), and not just because I’m with my husband (though it helps), but because I realized Alberta is where I’m supposed to be right now. I belong here, whether I feel it or not, because I know it’s where God has me for this part of my story. Maybe home is wherever I’m supposed to be, regardless of how comfortable I feel, which gives me permission to calm the restlessness, to be fully present, to have peace in the stillness. I’m not sure what home is, but I know how it feels. I’ve tried to pin down the elusive concept so many times but it seems to change definitions faster than I change residences. Maybe pieces of home are found in all of this. The whole adventure. The trans-Atlantic journeys, packing and unpacking and repacking, the celebration of hello and grieving of goodbye. Sugar peanuts and mango tree shade. Lemon rain jackets and evergreens. Fried plantains in Cameroon, South Carolina sweet tea, lavender mountains at sunrise, snow-covered prairies and icicles under window sills. Hospitality, sincerity, compassion. The hearts that say, “I love you. Let me share your burdens, too.” The God who says “I am with you. I will be your refuge and shelter.” And last of all, the many addresses on my long immigration form, and all the streets and zip codes from the eighteen years not listed. They are there in the background throughout the whole story, a quiet presence in every chapter...and maybe home is too.

Hadassah Winters Lampron has an American passport, grew up in Senegal, met her Québécois husband in Cameroon, and now lives in Alberta, Canada. She’s currently a grad student studying public policy analysis, and she hopes to make her way back to West Africa in the not-too-distant future. She’s also a singer/songwriter who has written about TCK themes. Check out her music here: https://www.youtube.com/ channel/UCjhqNAbclu__eJ8zF0QdsMg

Instagram: haddie.grace

I listed eight addresses. None of them felt like home.

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Resilience:

How to Develop a Resilient Mindset

By Tim Sanford, MA, LPC

he word resilience is in vogue these days with the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic around the globe. As a TCK you may be adapting better than others to the isolation and enforced changes occurring around us. Why? In part I think it’s because many of us grew up in and around hardship. We know poverty stricken cities, politically unstable or repressive governments, and other difficult living conditions. But…that’s not a guarantee.

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What Is Resilience? Resilience is the ability to face difficulty head on and maintain your emotional balance; you keep your “cool.” If and when you lose your balance, you bounce back and keep going. It’s known as mental toughness with the flexibility to adjust quickly to change and misfortune. Resilience isn’t merely surviving. It’s not about denying the depth of pain and its ongoing impact. Instead, it’s about learning from and growing through adversity—it’s about becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. But it’s not taught…it’s trained into you. It’s experientially learned, not textbook learned. Getting to Know Your Brain Briefly, your brain can be divided into two parts: The Upstairs and Downstairs Brain. The Upstairs Brain is the part that thinks, reasons, evaluates, catalogues things and places value on things. This is the part of the brain we teach. The ability

to be resilient, however, lies in the Downstairs Brain. This is the “fight or flight” part of the brain; where our habitual— mostly unconscious—memory resides. The Downstairs Brain doesn’t “think” per se, it reacts and responds. You train this part of your brain so when a crisis “stresses out” your Upstairs Brain, your Downstairs Brain automatically responds with the appropriate behavior and attitude trained into it. The US Navy Seals have a saying: “Under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion—you sink to the level of your training.” You rely on the training of your Downstairs Brain. Training Your Downstairs Brain Want to become more resilient? Believe it or not, training your brain to be resilient isn’t that complicated, and we already do it in certain aspects of our normal lives. When you walk onto the pitch for soccer practice, yes, there’s some teaching about the rules and how to be a better athlete, but most of the time you’re training. You practice and practice and practice. You scrimmage hard and the losing side “gets” to run extra laps. If you’re a musician, you play the same piece over and over and over until you can hear it and play it in your sleep. You then perform it in front of an audience or a panel of judges. US Military Basic Training is another (very rigorous) example. They don’t teach recruits much of anything, yet—that will come later. They drill and drill and drill you until the preferred combat responses are ingrained into your Downstairs Brain. JUNE 2020

Journey Among Worlds with us! Among Worlds magazine is accepting submissions for upcoming issues. We are looking for original, high-quality writing, poetry, photography, and visual pieces. We invite writers, poets, and artists to submit their work for consideration.

September 2020

Releasing: Living Fully and Letting Go Submission deadline: July 30, 2020

December 2020 Vocation: TCKs and Careers Submission deadline: October 30, 2020 If you or your organization would like to advertise in or sponsor Among Worlds, please contact amongworlds@ interactionintl.org.